2005: The Year in Film

What Happened to Me in the Dark...

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

2005 was the year of the message, as Hollywood struggled to put on long
pants and to seem relevant and important in an increasingly divided and
cynical world. Unfortunately, art suffered in the process; many of these
messages were so bald-faced and obvious that they may as well have
skipped the movie altogether and just hammered ticket-buyers' heads.
Very few movies bothered to use the medium, its textures and tones, its
physical spaces and capacity for emotional revelation, for anything at
all. Happily, I found ten that will endure long after the messages have
faded.

1.
Saraband
Ingmar Bergman's big screen comeback after a 20-year hiatus was greeted with indifference when it should have been a major event. "Saraband" revealed a master still at the top of his game and capable of heart-rending emotional integrity. It was as good as his best, and very possibly his last.

2.
Broken Flowers
Working with writer/director Jim Jarmusch, Bill Murray enhanced his deadpan persona with a new emotional resonance, cynical and dismissive in every aspect of life except with women, who for him still remain a wonderful, horrible mystery.

3.
A History of Violence
Armed with his biggest budget to date, David Cronenberg made his most easily digestible film and his biggest mainstream success, all without losing his remarkable touch. Struggling with Cronenbergian inner conflicts, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) suppresses one identity but discovers that the soul knows all.

4.
The World
Set in a massive, oddly beautiful, but vaguely disturbing theme park, this new film by Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, Unknown Pleasures) brilliantly explores the rewards and punishments of crossing boundaries and the tentative nature of human connection.

6.
Land of the Dead
Forget this year's "message" movies like Crash, North Country and Syriana. George A. Romero's fourth zombie film contained the scariest warning and the most perceptive microcosm of America at large.

7.
Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney understood that great showmanship must accompany "sending a message," and he does it here with his palpable black-and-white mood, as thick as cigarette smoke, and as rich as Edward R. Murrow's poetic on-air copy. The most exciting journalism movie since All the President's Men.

8.
Capote
More than just a great mimic job, Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Truman Capote has haunted me for months now, indulging so deeply his need for truth and glory that he sacrifices a part of his soul. It's one of the most perceptive portraits of the writing process ever filmed.

9.
Mysterious Skin
Based on a novel by Scott Heim, this film could have been another frightening, brutal tale of child molestation, but instead Gregg Araki treats the subject gently, focusing on the two boys' whose lives were changed in different ways and the shockingly beautiful way in which they find closure. It's the only film this year that understood the power of the human touch, as evidenced by the scene in which a sinister, snaked-eyed man (Billy Drago) covered in HIV-related sores, wishes nothing more than a backrub.

10.
The New World
Only Terrence Malick's fourth film in 32 years, the maddeningly opaque, intermittently brilliant "The New World" watches Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) and John Smith (Colin Farrell) slowly enter and absorb one another's worlds. Of course, one world finally and completely envelops the other, but Malick tells the familiar story with a poetic grandeur and an almost brutal, physically visual potency that unmasks this season's other award-contenders for what they are: a bunch of pretty postcards. It's a messy masterpiece and the year's only act of artistic lunacy.